Customer Reviews

The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

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This volume was the fourth in the published series of expurgated diaries beginning with the 1931 manuscript diaries of the prolific Anais Nin.

Unfortunately, although this volume begins with diary entries written some thirteen years after those in the first published volume, the reader has no sense that Nin's craft of diary-keeping as an art form evolved or matured in those thirteen years. It is impossible to tell whether this stems from Nin's habit of editing and reworking her material over the years, thus possibly refining early entries until they were on a par with her later work, or whether Nin was simply never able to improve on her first work inspired by her meeting Henry Miller.

Deidre Bair's biography of Nin reveals the interesting tidbit that Nin stopped keeping diaries in volume form some time during 1946, partway through this volume. After 1946 (particularly since Nin soon found herself living with two men, one on each coast), she jotted down notes on whatever papers were handy and tossed the notes into manila folders. The decrease in quality associated with this apparent lack of care shows, I think, as this volume progresses.

The life she was then leading, although distracting her from the diary, hardly constituted a work of art in and of itself. Nin spends much of this volume "ensorcelling" teenage boys as a woman in her forties. She declares frequently that she identifies with the young, and surrounds herself with them in preference to the rigid folks her own age. A more jaded view of Nin's behavior at this time is that men her own age were able to see through her games in a way that boys did not have the life experience to do. Although she frequently claims tremendous insight and understanding of psychoanalysis, she is ultimately blind to the uglier aspects of the larger patterns of her life at this time.

Because this is the expurgated version of the diary, this volume omits a critical event: Anais's meeting Rupert Pole, whom she would later marry, in 1947.

Verdict: only for hardcore Anais Nin fans.

I really used to love Anais Nin. Watching Henry & June and then reading the book introduced me. I could read House Of Incest several times and still found it beautiful and fascinating. Sadly, this book has reversed my good opinion of her. I still WANT to like her but I really can't. For the first half of the book, I was still liking her. She has some very good things to say about art and writing and love. It's a novelty to see her in the Village and trying to deal with writers and artists, some of whom are a little crazy.

Then about halfway through the book, I'm sick of her. She's like Blanche Dubois, trying to create a world of beauty and elegance by any means necessary including self-deception and surrounding herself with young men who are more "pure" or "flexible" or whatever the pedophiles are saying these days. I wanted to be sympathetic to her, but then I remembered that she was in her forties when she wrote this fluff and there's no real excuse for fetishizing youth into some kind of token against adult responsibilities. My breaking point comes when her filmmaker friend Maya puts her in a movie and she's angry because Maya didn't film everyone looking pretty. She has one particular view of what constitutes beauty and poetry and woe to anyone that steps outside of it.

The last third of the book is fascinating for the fact that it centers on Gore Vidal. While most of us would be justified in assuming that Vidal came out of the womb as a bitter serpent angrily spewing bile and spite in all directions, Anais Nin sees him as a sensitive poet type. She's in love with his talent and since she also sees herself as a maternal figure (to replace the real awful mother in the same way that Henry Miller was a paternal figure to replace her absent creepy father) to guide Vidal through the world of literature. Once Vidal publishes The City and the Pillar: A Novel, she realizes that he's also a man and he has grown to the point where she can no longer influence him. So she rejects him and tells him in no uncertain terms that he's awful.

I still don't know how to view that one. On one hand, Anais Nin is a self-involved little flake who tries to impose her view upon Vidal. On the other hand, she did see something good and pure in Vidal and as wrongheaded as that view is (did I mention that I hate Gore Vidal) there's something rather sweet and innocent in that assessment. ANd yet on the other hand, Anais Nin has soured me to the concepts of sweetness or innocence and turned them into monstrous viewpoints.

Interesting book, but only if you really really like Anais Nin and her self-involved idiocy. If not, you'll like her no better by the end. And if you are neutral about her, you will hate her after this book.

Bought this book for a friend and never read it. Sorry , I can't review it.